American Politics

[Westy]

Or maybe, GT, we could say more "earthy" pursuits.

[Gentleman Travel]

Thanks, GT, clear as mud. I may be adding to my own confusion, though; I associate "conservatism" with the core ideas of Adam Smith, Montesquieu, John Lock, and Edmund Burke; with the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I associate "liberalism" with statism, the behavior of empowering the State at the expense of liberty.

Only in contemporary American vernacular does it take on this meaning, but since this thread is entitled "American politics" perhaps you are correct.

But the correct definition (from Wikipedia) is:
"Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom") is the belief in the importance of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutions, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the separation of church and state."

Whereas "conservative" is defined thusly,
"Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to preserve") is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and opposes rapid change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were."

This is similar to being a "Tory" - although it does not speak to the social obligations of toryism. A Tory does not believe in dog-eat-dog capitalism or hold individual rights supreme - but rather he believes in an orderly, traditional society in which those on top (ideally the Tory in question) have some obligations to those beneath ("noblese oblige").

But perhaps this discussion is becoming a touch arcane for ISG and we should turn our minds to more earthly pursuits?

[Clandestine782]

Nowadays, nobody in the U.S. much cares what Margaret Thatcher has to say about Liberals, given the fact that the most prosperous periods in post-war America happened under Bill Clinton, and in the U.K. under Tony Blair. Unfortunately for Blair, he was too quick to acquiesce to George Bush's brand of Foreign Policy, and the domestic prosperity he presided over was rather quickly forgotten.

2) Yes, Locke inspired first the American Revolution, and then the French

3) in actual fact, those bankers who begged for the bailouts did self-identify as Conservatives. But it certainly highlights their hypocrisy when, when push came to shove and they were faced with insolvency, their "Conservative principles" be damned - they just wanted their losses covered by the Government. And it was a couple of "Conservatives" appointed by the Bush Administration who covered those losses - admittedly with Liberals acquiescing as well to the bail out. Fear and self-interest can certainly make one abandon their highest minded principles.

4) Why do we care about Enemy Combatants? Simply because the fundamental basis for our nation is that we are a nation founded on the basis of principles, not on the basis of individuals. And when we betray our own founding principles in defense of our nation, we squander the very rationale of our existence. If our core principles are not worthy of preserving in our own defense, perhaps our nation is not worthy of defending. If we stoop to the level of those who would tear us down - perhaps they OUGHT to tear us down.

5) OUR system, unlike the Chinese - is based upon the fundamental principle that it is MORE important to protect ONE innocent person against the oppression of the government, than it is to bring ten guilty people to their punishment. If you disagree with that system - well, the trend is in your favor, as the Chinese flavor of due process seems well on it's way toward world dominance.

6) I was not actually referring to prostitution laws, I was referring to Sodomy laws, which Antonin Scalia and 3 other of the most Conservative members of the Supreme Court - believe to still be the prerogative of the state to enforce.

7) Again, OUR nation was founded as a paradigm of being better than the rest because ALL religions were given equal opportunity. If we now claim that Islam is not entitled to the same protections as Christianity, Because in OTHER countries, Islam is given unique sway over the entire populace, well, then, tear the Constitution to shreds - it's no longer worth the parchment it's written on. And if you think our Constitution is in such danger of being usurped by Sharia Law, which is only supported by a minority of one Religion, and in that case, the most poorly secularly educated observers of that one Religion, then I think you fail to give our system of laws anywhere near the credit that it deserves. Our Constitution's framers fundamentally believed that ALL ideas are worthy of admission to the table, and that only through a robust and all-encompassing debate, will the strongest ideas survive. The Arab states you implicitly mention where Sharia Law is prevalent, most assuredly do not encourage that sort of free exchange of ideas, because they well know that Sharia Law would never be implemented nor observed in such an open society.

In any case, thanks, Clandestine782, for such a timely primer on how Conservatives can conveniently throw their bedrock principles away whenever it suits the winds of public opinion. The hypocrisy couldn't be any more glaring.

That was a nice response. At least you bothered to answer the questions one by one and not turn this into personal attacks (this happens all the time on this forum).

1. As for Magaret Thatcher: She was the person who presided over a prosperous period in the United Kingdom (because Britain was looking very rough for a time). I've also read her books (that quote is from "Statecraft") and find that she is very intelligent (she was a Ph.D. in Chemistry), so when she talked about social issues, she did it with great perspective and insight.

2. Ok, if you look into the French Revolution, you will find that even if Locke did have something to say that inspired some aspect of the French Revolution, you can know that the ideas behind that revolution were VERY DIFFERENT to the ones behind the American Revolution. (How many republics has France been through since then? And did you read anything about the Reign of Terror in France that happened shortly after the French Revolution?) In sum, the French Revolution was a very different thing to the American one-- even if they happen to both be related by the fact that they were revolutions.

3. Ok, so the bankers were conservatives (where have you read this, by the way? Can you point to a single metric that describes/ quantifies the degree of conservatism by the bankers)? And in any case, you could turn that argument on its head. One of the biggest scams in the United States is the university system (at all levels). Now, universities are well to the left of the general population, and they produce a very little bit of economic value-- relative to what they suck up. (Do a google of "Courtney Munna nytimes.com" and you will get the story of a girl who spent $100,000 on an undergraduate education that she will be paying off for the rest of her life.) But can you say that what universities did (and do) is right because of their political persuasion? Even though universities and banks are EQUALLY GUILTY of moral hazard (i.e., not worrying about what someone else has to pay for and in what quantity).

I don't think this is an issue of political preference (again). If government policy (over some number of years and some number of administrations) allowed banks to become "too big too fail," then *that* is what created the conditions for banks to make reckless decisions. It's likely that you didn't look up the currency board countries (or the concept), but one of the central features of an Orthodox currency board is that it does not get into setting the discount interest rates (1) and that it does not act as a lender of last resort (2). I think if someone had thought to not let banks large enough to be too big to fail, then this might not have happened. Zombie banks have happened before (Japan. China.) The US could have seen this coming. And this was a policy issue.

4. Then this is where we disagree. Principles in the abstract are fine. But we exist in the real world. So, what I see as a cost benefit issue (that letting 10 guilty people go free really is more costly than imprisoning one innocent person) is a moral issue to you. And because of that, we'll never be able to come to an agreement on this.

5. I live here in China now, and find that they are (in some respects) no nonsense. When those people killed children, there was no reason for some lawyer to drag that out for 15 years. Getting executed in a timely fashion was better for everyone (including those people who might not have had time for a day in court because judges were busy listening to lawywers stretch out said cases to said amount of time) because the cost of that one life was worth the safety of many others.

6. I think you want to look into that case a bit more carefully. I believe that that was ruling on the constitutionality of a law that was in Georgia. The Supreme Court is an appellate court, and they don't worry about writing the laws. They just deal with the issue of whether a state can constitutionally pass a law (even if they don't agree with it). This is the difference between Strict Constructionism and Living Constitution theorists.

7. That is not true (that Sharia would not be implemented in free societies), and this is because Sharia was chosen by the House of Saud (Saudi Arabia) and Afghanistan (Taliban) with no outside pressure. (They are both Wahabbis.) I know that Nigeria has had some trouble with various localities wanting to ignore the secular law and institute Sharia in its place. Ditto for Yemen and Somalia.

I think the issue we have (about how far to let Muslims take over the United States) is not one that we can solve. I am looking at this in a real life way (i.e., something that HAS happened and CAN happen again and SHOULD be avoided if at all possible). You are looking at this as an abstract principle that exists in some reality somewhere. On this earth: (1) Muslims are not fond of the West; (2) The problem of some people coming someplace and starting out as guests and then taking over has happened before. (Think of China in either Tibet or Xinjiang. Those people were independent nations at one time and then they got in bed with China and lost ALL of their territory. Mongolia did a little better and lost half of theirs. Russia in in the process of losing its border states. If you google "Russia china revanchism," you will find articles that talk about just that.)

So, dealing with things that exist on THIS Earth, you can see that gate-crashers happen all the time. And once you know that, it is the problem of the practical issue of preventing that. (That was the point of Switzerland's not allowing minarets.)

We could talk about the benefits of NOT having a constitution written down (like Britain and Israel), but that's getting too deep.

[Member #2041]

1. There is some confusion about the definition of "liberal." When you are talking about classical liberals, then you are talking agbout people along the lines of F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and others who were something very much like radical libertarians. Then you have people like that assclown Noam Chomsky who believes in something called "Libertarian Socialism" (whatever the fuck that could mean). So, yes, both have been called "liberal," but it is just a word whose meaning can (and has) changed over time. (Kind of like that word "gay.")

People like Margaret Thatcher have commented on the tendency of those on the left to use verbal contortion (since the ideas that they have tend to quickly be shown to be wrong/ false/ foolish). Hereof is yet another example.

2. You talk about two revolutions. I know that one is the US Revolution (1776 and after). But what other one could you mean? I hope you don't mean the French Revolution......

3. Conservatives asking for bailouts? Are you sure that this is an issue of "liberal" vs. "conservative" as much as it is of moral hazard? (If you are a bank president and know that you can use someone else's money to bail out your bank, then you will do things as frivolous as come to your mind.) Or is it an issue of just poor legislation over many administrations (both liberal and conservative)? If you do any reading, you can know that there are plenty of governments that don't bother getting into the issue of acting as a lender of last resort. (Any country that has a currency board system).

4. Prisoners of war........... If someone acts as an enemy combatant, why is everyone else worried about whining about what happens to them? Would these people extend you the same courtesy if you were doing the same thing in their country?

5. Probable cause eavesdropping........Not sure what you are getting at here. I know that all this legal bullshit does not happen in China. (For example, the people who attacked children at kindergartens were tried and executed within 30 days.) It might work out better if there are fewer steps involved in the government being able to gather information to take care of business. Have you ever thought about this as a cost-benefit issue (as opposed to moralizing/ turning this issue into a soapbox)? That the cost of a few people feeling aggrieved about not having absolute privacy might be less than the cost of being able to get the information that is needed to stop some plan in progress?

6. Consensual sexual activities of adults.......Ok, you do know that prostitution is a state/ local issue, right? And you can find that you have left wing places (like Massachusetts) or right wing places (like Texas) that outlaw prostitution. So, not only is not a federal issue, but you can find that local governments on both sides of the fence have something to say about it.

7. Houses of worship.........Well, there is another way to look at this. Not everything can be reduced to a legal issue. If there are some people who want to protect themselves from people who don't share their culture, then why not? Again: The PRC government is instructive in this way. If they don't want to approve a permit for some house of worship (or any other thing), then they will just not do it and not discuss the reasons why. It is very clear the the Islamic world is not a friend to the Non-Islamic world--- and has not been for a long time. (You can read Samuel Huntington, "Clash of Civilizations" for details.) The simple answer is that "once the camel gets his nose into the tent, then the rest will follow." And it really is that simple. Not allowing those people to build that house of worship in that place would be stopping the camel from getting his nose into the tent (i.e., through some series of steps trying to set up Shariah law--check out the writings of Frank
Gaffney on this topic). You could turn it into a legal issue (i.e., a process based issue) or you could see it in a results-oriented way (in which case you would conclude to stop the camel from getting his nose into the tent-- and to do it with a minimum amount of discussion).

Nowadays, nobody in the U.S. much cares what Margaret Thatcher has to say about Liberals, given the fact that the most prosperous periods in post-war America happened under Bill Clinton, and in the U.K. under Tony Blair. Unfortunately for Blair, he was too quick to acquiesce to George Bush's brand of Foreign Policy, and the domestic prosperity he presided over was rather quickly forgotten.

2) Yes, Locke inspired first the American Revolution, and then the French

3) in actual fact, those bankers who begged for the bailouts did self-identify as Conservatives. But it certainly highlights their hypocrisy when, when push came to shove and they were faced with insolvency, their "Conservative principles" be damned - they just wanted their losses covered by the Government. And it was a couple of "Conservatives" appointed by the Bush Administration who covered those losses - admittedly with Liberals acquiescing as well to the bail out. Fear and self-interest can certainly make one abandon their highest minded principles.

4) Why do we care about Enemy Combatants? Simply because the fundamental basis for our nation is that we are a nation founded on the basis of principles, not on the basis of individuals. And when we betray our own founding principles in defense of our nation, we squander the very rationale of our existence. If our core principles are not worthy of preserving in our own defense, perhaps our nation is not worthy of defending. If we stoop to the level of those who would tear us down - perhaps they OUGHT to tear us down.

5) OUR system, unlike the Chinese - is based upon the fundamental principle that it is MORE important to protect ONE innocent person against the oppression of the government, than it is to bring ten guilty people to their punishment. If you disagree with that system - well, the trend is in your favor, as the Chinese flavor of due process seems well on it's way toward world dominance.

6) I was not actually referring to prostitution laws, I was referring to Sodomy laws, which Antonin Scalia and 3 other of the most Conservative members of the Supreme Court - believe to still be the prerogative of the state to enforce.

7) Again, OUR nation was founded as a paradigm of being better than the rest because ALL religions were given equal opportunity. If we now claim that Islam is not entitled to the same protections as Christianity, Because in OTHER countries, Islam is given unique sway over the entire populace, well, then, tear the Constitution to shreds - it's no longer worth the parchment it's written on. And if you think our Constitution is in such danger of being usurped by Sharia Law, which is only supported by a minority of one Religion, and in that case, the most poorly secularly educated observers of that one Religion, then I think you fail to give our system of laws anywhere near the credit that it deserves. Our Constitution's framers fundamentally believed that ALL ideas are worthy of admission to the table, and that only through a robust and all-encompassing debate, will the strongest ideas survive. The Arab states you implicitly mention where Sharia Law is prevalent, most assuredly do not encourage that sort of free exchange of ideas, because they well know that Sharia Law would never be implemented nor observed in such an open society.

In any case, thanks, Clandestine782, for such a timely primer on how Conservatives can conveniently throw their bedrock principles away whenever it suits the winds of public opinion. The hypocrisy couldn't be any more glaring.

[Clandestine782]

Except nowadays, here in the U.S., we have "Conservatives" who run financial institutions going begging for government bailouts rather than face the consequences when they make stupid business decisions, and other "Conservatives" such as Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke giving them those bailouts. We have "Conservatives" rejecting the rights of private property owners to build whatever house of worship that they choose on their own property, "Conservatives" seeking to have the government interject itself in the consensual sexual activities of adults, "Conservatives" seeking all manner of government eavesdropping on private citizens without any sort of probable cause, and "Conservatives" setting up a shadow military prison system so that accused prisoners of war can be tortured and held in perpetuity without any hope of due process.

No wonder you're confused, Westy - you're using an entirely obsolete definition of a "Conservative" - at least as far as the U.S. is concerned.

Oh, and BTW, at the time he lived, John Locke and the ideas he espoused were considered to be extremist Liberal, to the point of being the inspiration for not one, but the two greatest Revolutions of the 18th century.

1. There is some confusion about the definition of "liberal." When you are talking about classical liberals, then you are talking agbout people along the lines of F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and others who were something very much like radical libertarians. Then you have people like that assclown Noam Chomsky who believes in something called "Libertarian Socialism" (whatever the fuck that could mean). So, yes, both have been called "liberal," but it is just a word whose meaning can (and has) changed over time. (Kind of like that word "gay.")

People like Margaret Thatcher have commented on the tendency of those on the left to use verbal contortion (since the ideas that they have tend to quickly be shown to be wrong/ false/ foolish). Hereof is yet another example.

2. You talk about two revolutions. I know that one is the US Revolution (1776 and after). But what other one could you mean? I hope you don't mean the French Revolution......

3. Conservatives asking for bailouts? Are you sure that this is an issue of "liberal" vs. "conservative" as much as it is of moral hazard? (If you are a bank president and know that you can use someone else's money to bail out your bank, then you will do things as frivolous as come to your mind.) Or is it an issue of just poor legislation over many administrations (both liberal and conservative)? If you do any reading, you can know that there are plenty of governments that don't bother getting into the issue of acting as a lender of last resort. (Any country that has a currency board system).

4. Prisoners of war........... If someone acts as an enemy combatant, why is everyone else worried about whining about what happens to them? Would these people extend you the same courtesy if you were doing the same thing in their country?

5. Probable cause eavesdropping........Not sure what you are getting at here. I know that all this legal bullshit does not happen in China. (For example, the people who attacked children at kindergartens were tried and executed within 30 days.) It might work out better if there are fewer steps involved in the government being able to gather information to take care of business. Have you ever thought about this as a cost-benefit issue (as opposed to moralizing/ turning this issue into a soapbox)? That the cost of a few people feeling aggrieved about not having absolute privacy might be less than the cost of being able to get the information that is needed to stop some plan in progress?

6. Consensual sexual activities of adults.......Ok, you do know that prostitution is a state/ local issue, right? And you can find that you have left wing places (like Massachusetts) or right wing places (like Texas) that outlaw prostitution. So, not only is not a federal issue, but you can find that local governments on both sides of the fence have something to say about it.

7. Houses of worship.........Well, there is another way to look at this. Not everything can be reduced to a legal issue. If there are some people who want to protect themselves from people who don't share their culture, then why not? Again: The PRC government is instructive in this way. If they don't want to approve a permit for some house of worship (or any other thing), then they will just not do it and not discuss the reasons why. It is very clear the the Islamic world is not a friend to the Non-Islamic world--- and has not been for a long time. (You can read Samuel Huntington, "Clash of Civilizations" for details.) The simple answer is that "once the camel gets his nose into the tent, then the rest will follow." And it really is that simple. Not allowing those people to build that house of worship in that place would be stopping the camel from getting his nose into the tent (i.e., through some series of steps trying to set up Shariah law--check out the writings of Frank
Gaffney on this topic). You could turn it into a legal issue (i.e., a process based issue) or you could see it in a results-oriented way (in which case you would conclude to stop the camel from getting his nose into the tent-- and to do it with a minimum amount of discussion).

[Westy]

Except nowadays, here in the U.S., we have "Conservatives" who run financial institutions going begging for government bailouts rather than face the consequences when they make stupid business decisions, and other "Conservatives" such as Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke giving them those bailouts. We have "Conservatives" rejecting the rights of private property owners to build whatever house of worship that they choose on their own property, "Conservatives" seeking to have the government interject itself in the consensual sexual activities of adults, "Conservatives" seeking all manner of government eavesdropping on private citizens without any sort of probable cause, and "Conservatives" setting up a shadow military prison system so that accused prisoners of war can be tortured and held in perpetuity without any hope of due process.

No wonder you're confused, Westy - you're using an entirely obsolete definition of a "Conservative" - at least as far as the U.S. is concerned.

Oh, and BTW, at the time he lived, John Locke and the ideas he espoused were considered to be extremist Liberal, to the point of being the inspiration for not one, but the two greatest Revolutions of the 18th century.

I don't think I'm the only one confused, that's for dayamm sure. And yes, you're right about Locke.

When I think about it in contemporaries' terms, you couldn't get much more dangerously radical-liberal in 1776 than this, could you?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness....

[Member #2041]

Thanks, GT, clear as mud. I may be adding to my own confusion, though; I associate "conservatism" with the core ideas of Adam Smith, Montesquieu, John Lock, and Edmund Burke; with the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I associate "liberalism" with statism, the behavior of empowering the State at the expense of liberty.

Except nowadays, here in the U.S., we have "Conservatives" who run financial institutions going begging for government bailouts rather than face the consequences when they make stupid business decisions, and other "Conservatives" such as Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke giving them those bailouts. We have "Conservatives" rejecting the rights of private property owners to build whatever house of worship that they choose on their own property, "Conservatives" seeking to have the government interject itself in the consensual sexual activities of adults, "Conservatives" seeking all manner of government eavesdropping on private citizens without any sort of probable cause, and "Conservatives" setting up a shadow military prison system so that accused prisoners of war can be tortured and held in perpetuity without any hope of due process.

No wonder you're confused, Westy - you're using an entirely obsolete definition of a "Conservative" - at least as far as the U.S. is concerned.

Oh, and BTW, at the time he lived, John Locke and the ideas he espoused were considered to be extremist Liberal, to the point of being the inspiration for not one, but the two greatest Revolutions of the 18th century.

[Westy]

The Liberals ARE the "conservative" party in Australia, and always have been.
And, if you think about it, the Republicans are the "liberal" party in the US, excepting the religious right, which is illiberal in the extreme.

In Canada, the Conservative Party has traditionally been "tory" but now is increasingly like the American Republicans, and the Liberal Party is usually socialist and rarely liberal, in the most traditional sense.

All clear now?

Thanks, GT, clear as mud. I may be adding to my own confusion, though; I associate "conservatism" with the core ideas of Adam Smith, Montesquieu, John Lock, and Edmund Burke; with the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I associate "liberalism" with statism, the behavior of empowering the State at the expense of liberty.

[Australiasucks]

Everyone is going to be asian and muslim in 100 years.

Probably true, and we can blame the femnazis for the disappearance of Europeans.

[Gentleman Travel]

How is it the the "Liberal Party" in Australia could take part in a "conservative coalition"? And I thought the USA's "Republicans vs. Democrats" were f***ed up ....

The Liberals ARE the "conservative" party in Australia, and always have been.
And, if you think about it, the Republicans are the "liberal" party in the US, excepting the religious right, which is illiberal in the extreme.

In Canada, the Conservative Party has traditionally been "tory" but now is increasingly like the American Republicans, and the Liberal Party is usually socialist and rarely liberal, in the most traditional sense.

All clear now?

[Westy]

Australiasucks, I've got a question.

Last week, The Economist had an article about the Australian elections. They refered to Julia Gillard's unseating of Kevin Rudd as Labor leader (and Prime Minister) as "the first act in a soap opera that has since bedevilled Labor's campaign against the conservative Liberal-National opposition."

How is it the the "Liberal Party" in Australia could take part in a "conservative coalition"? And I thought the USA's "Republicans vs. Democrats" were f***ed up ....

[Jon32]

The Western world we know with its power and influence will not exist for much longer, this is clearly going to be an Asian world order, in my country we are getting used to this notion, but I think people in Europe and the US will take a while if ever to accept this new reality for the world.

Everyone is going to be asian and muslim in 100 years.

[Australiasucks]

It's not just Spain it's the entire continent. Millions of them are now living in every Euro country. Many Europeans honestly believe they will take over the continent in less than 50 years. The U.N. made the greatest error of its existence when they requested in the early 1980s Euro borders open to refugees from middle east muslim and northeast African countries bringing their barbaric, primitive, religious behavior to western civilization in the midst of prosperity. Now 25 years later almost every Euro country has economic problems because of governmental support to these people through numerous programs while full blood Europeans suffer because of taxes, job lose etc.

As for America, Americans are an impatient breed. They need to realize it took 8 years to economically destroy the country. It will take more than 2, even more than 4 years to correct the mismanagement. Furthermore, wealthy Americans have to accept to pay some more in taxes to correct the previous administrations mistakes of giving them tax breaks. There is no other solution.

You fail to see that both American parties are largely the same, they pretty much do whatever it takes to keep them in power. Bush initiated the bank bailouts and the two wars, although Obama is pulling out of Iraq, he is escalating the one in Afghanistan. He is also creating unprecedented control over American business and industry, the likes which have not been seen since the Soviet Union, GM for example is now a government company, the US fed now has more control over the nations banks as well. America's prosperity was built on free enterprise. What Obama does differently is his rhetoric, he speaks with a reconciliation tone to the world, not that the world really cares what America says these days. Bush destroyed America's soft power in his 8 years with his unilateral actions and with us or against us rhetoric, Obama is going to ruin America from the inside, creating a system that punishes the most productive and ambitious, after that the US will be a has been power, and the way of life that Americans have gotten used to is not going to last for much longer. Its pretty much now a question of when and not if, the NIE report states this decline will occur over the next 20 years, that seems quite right to me.

Europe shot itself, its not that simple just to blame the Muslim migrants, Europe has long had low fertility rates, that led Europeans to increase immigration. Australia, Canada, and the rest of the developed world is doing the same to prevent demographic decline.

The Western world we know with its power and influence will not exist for much longer, this is clearly going to be an Asian world order, in my country we are getting used to this notion, but I think people in Europe and the US will take a while if ever to accept this new reality for the world.

[Westy]

{Open-door immigration} is equally true of Canada, don't know about the US.
Government deliberately opened the floodgates of immigration hoping that the newcomers would fund the pensions and government services of our aging, stagnant population. This instead of fixing the fundamental problem by living within our means.

The other argument was we needed immigrants to grow the population (again - why? why not recalibrate our spending model to make a stable or declining population sustainable?) but the big joke is that most immigrant groups, once they get established here, catch the "causian disease" and experience a decline in birthrate. Maybe muslims are an exception, but many immigrant groups reduce reproduction for the same reasons westerners do.

So government policy (driven by lack of foresight) has dramatically changed the ethnic and cultural composition of many countries without really getting the economic or demographic benefits they banked on.

By now, I'm of the belief that no politician's foresight reaches farther than the next election cycle. The Holy Grail is to get elected, then re-elected and re-elected, usually by providing the "bread and circuses" they believe their constituents demand. Or "need". They "solve" their district's "problems" by throwing lots of money at the targets they perceive ... in many cases, finding a way to benefit from the money they throw; in even more cases, being accused of reaping an unseen, unauthorized, and "unholy" benefit from their policies.

I perceive this as true of Republicans or Democrats; Tories, Labour or Lib Dems; Peronistas or Colorados - in other words, true of any well-established and major party in any country. It's not a "Left" problem or a "Right" problem, it's a power problem. They have the power, they want to use it; they want to leave "their stamp" on the country for years to come. And of course they want to keep their hands on the power!

Trouble is, now Government IS the problem.

Back to immigration - In the early days of the USA, we had a very thin edge of "population" surrounding a huge span of "wilderness". We were anxious to populate our country and had plenty of "room to grow". These were the days of Horace Greeley's "Go West, young man!" But what we got were teeming cities, full of immigrants who stayed on where they washed ashore, settled in enclaves of their own ethnic heritage. Lady Liberty's "Give me your tired, your poor..." was faced off by "No Irish Need Apply."

Since the 1920s, we've had various greater or lesser restrictions on who can come in legally to the USA. We've also had a great influx of what I'll call "informal immigrants" (I'm being Politically Correct) crossing the borders. Billions of people around the world still see the USA as "The Land Of Opportunity," and they will risk their meager fortunes and even their lives to get here.

Immigration policy, immigration reform, "informal immigration" as I called it - there's a continuing fire-fight in Congress and in the State legislatures about these issues. My opinions are rather jaundiced, but I have some delightful friends who "overstayed their visas," worked hard, saved hard, and took a really nice "grubstake" back to their homelands. I've also seen lazy good-for-nothings who came to the USA for the sake of getting government handouts, and who cleared out when the INS came a-sniffing....

AND, best of all, I tip my hat to some of my immigrant friends who cleared in properly, got their USA citizenship, and have done as much or more for their new homeland as the USA has done for them. My colleagues Jorge and Federico, my neighbors the Kanes, the Paks, the Nguyens, etc., etc....

[Gentleman Travel]

Its a lot more complicated than just the UN pushing these countries to spur migration. Most European nations are aging, and one of the ideas they had was to bring in more immigrants, many of these migrants from the Middle East do not want to integrate into mainstream European society and hence you get problems.

This is equally true of Canada, don't know about the US.
Government deliberately opened the floodgates of immigration hoping that the newcomers would fund the pensions and government services of our aging, stagnant population. This instead of fixing the fundamental problem by living within our means.

The other argument was we needed immigrants to grow the population (again - why? why not recalibrate our spending model to make a stable or declining population sustainable?) but the big joke is that most immigrant groups, once they get established here, catch the "causian disease" and experience a decline in birthrate. Maybe muslims are an exception, but many immigrant groups reduce reproduction for the same reasons westerners do.

So government policy (driven by lack of foresight) has dramatically changed the ethnic and cultural composition of many countries without really getting the economic or demographic benefits they banked on.